This study, a first in comparing HPV educational formats, suggests that both written and video interventions are equally effective in educating about HPV and increasing young adults' vaccination intentions.

Differences between correlates of vaccination intentions and uptake suggest that social influences of liked and trusted individuals may make an important and unique contribution in motivating young women to receive the HPV vaccine beyond other variables from the HBM and TPB. Future utilization of longitudinal designs is needed to understand which factors may cause individuals to decide to receive the HPV vaccine.

While the field of empirical study on religion and spirituality in relation to mental health has rapidly expanded over the past decade, little is known about underlying dimensions of spirituality cross-culturally conceived. We aimed to bridge this gap by inductively deriving potential universal dimensions of spirituality through a large-scale, multi-national data collection, and examining the relationships of these dimensions with common psychiatric conditions. Five-thousand five-hundred and twelve participants from China, India, and the United States completed a two-hour online survey consisting of wide-ranging measures of the lived experience of spirituality, as well as clinical assessments. A series of inductive Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and cross-validating Exploratory Structural Equation Modeling (ESEM) were conducted to derive common underlying dimensions of spirituality. Logistic regression analyses were then conducted with each dimension to predict depression, suicidal ideation, generalized anxiety, and substance-related disorders. Preliminary EFA results were consistently supported by ESEM findings. Analyses of 40 spirituality measures revealed five invariant factors across countries which were interpreted as five dimensions of universal spiritual experience, specifically: love, in the fabric of relationships and as a sacred reality; unifying interconnectedness, as a sense of energetic oneness with other beings in the universe; altruism, as a commitment beyond the self with care and service; contemplative practice, such as meditation, prayer, yoga, or qigong; and religious and spiritual reflection and commitment, as a life well-examined. Love, interconnectedness, and altruism were associated with less risk of psychopathology for all countries. Religious and spiritual reflection and commitment and contemplative practice were associated with less risk in India and the United States but associated with greater risk in China. Education was directly associated with dimensions of spiritual awareness in India and China but inversely associated with dimensions in the United States. Findings support the notion that spirituality is a universal phenomenon with potentially universal dimensions. These aspects of spirituality may each offer protective effects against psychiatric symptoms and disorders and suggest new directions for treatment.

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Spirituality has been identified in the research literature as inversely associated with symptoms of depression and suicidal ideation. Whether or not this association might be culturally and religiously bound within Judeo-Christian Western traditions, or more universally human, has yet to be examined. As a step toward exploring universality, we investigated whether the inverse association between spirituality and depression is found, and perhaps relatively stable in magnitude, across 3 religiously and culturally diverse cultures: the United States, China, and India. Our study sample included 5,512 participants (41% women, mean age 29 years, age range 18 -75 years) from the United States (N ϭ 1,499), China (N ϭ 3,150), and India (N ϭ 863). Scales used to assess personal spirituality included the Delaney Spirituality Scale (a phenomenological scale) and Daily Spiritual Experience subscale from the Fetzer Brief Multidimensional Measure of Religiousness and Spirituality (a more theistic scale). Severity of depressive symptoms and suicidal ideation were assessed using the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9). A high level of personal spirituality decreased by half the relative risk of moderate depression across all 3 countries-United States, China, and India. The findings were consistent using a phenomenological conceptualization for spirituality, but true only for India and United States for a theistic conceptualization. Spirituality in phenomenological terms was protective against suicidal ideation across all 3 countries, with a theistic conceptualization protective only in the United States. Findings were interpreted as pointing to the possibility of universal phenomenological spirituality as protective against depression.

This pilot study investigates spiritual development as progressing in accordance with chakra theory. Chakra theory posits that spirituality emerges in a developmental monotonic fashion with increasing degrees of connection and spiritual awareness. People further into the progression generally show greater mental health and stronger character virtues, while individuals in earlier stages of development show greater pathology and lower levels of character virtues. Latent Class Analysis (LCA) was used in a sample of 1633 adults from the United States to empirically derive five profiles of spiritual connection, which reflected the monotonic progression predicted by the chakra theory. Participants who were low on all five variables of spiritual connection (3% of participants) were labeled the "Disconnected" class, and participants who were high on all five variables were labeled the "Highly Connected" class (16% of participants). The Disconnected class showed the greatest psychopathology (depressive and anxious symptoms) and lowest levels of positive psychology traits (gratitude, grit, satisfaction with life, selfcompassion, and flourishing), while the Highly Connected class showed the lowest psychopathology and highest levels of positive psychology traits. The other three classes, which fell between the Disconnected class and the Highly Connected class, carried intermediate levels of psychopathology and character strengths. Findings support future investigation on a universal progression of spiritual development based upon chakra theory.

The aim of the current investigation was to identify universal profiles of lived spirituality. A study on a large sample of participants (N = 5512) across three countries, India, China, and the United States, suggested there are at least five cross-cultural phenotypic dimensions of personal spiritual capacity—spiritual reflection and commitment; contemplative practice; perception of interconnectedness; perception of love; and practice of altruism—that are protective against pathology in a community sample and have been replicated in matched clinical and non-clinical samples. Based on the highest frequency combinations of these five capacities in the same sample, we explored potentially dynamic profiles of spiritual engagement. We inductively derived five profiles using Latent Profile Analysis (LPA): non-seeking; socially disconnected; spiritual emergence; virtuous humanist; and spiritually integrated. We also examined, in this cross-sectional data, covariates external to the LPA model which measure disposition towards meaning across two dimensions: seeking and fulfillment, of which the former necessarily precedes the latter. These meaning covariates, in conjunction with cross-profile age differences, suggest the profiles might represent sequential phases along an emergent path of spiritual development. Subsequent regression analyses conducted to predict depression, anxiety, substance-related disorders, and positive psychology based on spiritual engagement profiles revealed the spiritually integrated profile was most protected against psychopathology, while the spiritual emergence profile was at highest risk. While this developmental process may be riddled with struggle, as evidenced by elevated rates of psychopathology and substance use in the intermediate phases, this period is a transient one that necessarily precedes one of mental wellness and resilience—the spiritual development process is ultimately buoyant and protective.

Objectives The social unrest that began in Hong Kong in 2019 became a threat to public mental health, such as for depression and post-traumatic stress disorders. A supportive family environment is the most effective protective factor for mental health problems for young people who are exposed to conflict and violence. This study investigated the outcomes of a brief mindful parenting workshop on parent mental health and family functioning. Methods Using a randomized controlled trial design, 54 parents of adolescents and young adults were randomized into intervention group and waitlist control group. Depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress symptoms, negative emotions, family functioning, and family conflicts were measured at baseline (pretest), following training, and at 3-month follow-up. Results We found a significant improvement in family functioning among parents in the intervention group when compared to those parents in the control group ( F [1, 51] = 4.41, p = .04). When we further controlled the child-initiated physical conflict as covariate, a significant reduction of self-rated levels of depressive symptoms was found in the parents from the intervention group when compared to the parents in the control group ( F [1, 49] = 5.14, p = .03). Conclusions We found preliminary evidence that a brief mindful parenting workshop can strengthen parent and family mental health at times of social unrest. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT04427683).